


L.I.O.N. Hearted

by John_Steiner



Series: L.I.O.N.I.S.E. [1]
Category: Fantasy - Fandom, distant future - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:49:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22746553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: Humankind had become many breeds, and endless strife followed. Amid the siege of a fortress a knighted nobleman, Daros leads his men against defenders of a smaller yet craftier race known as Mills. Daros must demonstrate by example why the cause of his people, the Regs, is just despite being mortally wounded.
Series: L.I.O.N.I.S.E. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635547





	L.I.O.N. Hearted

Initially, Daros reflected, the siege of Tansu was going well. Then the defenders revealed their craftiness in full with repeating crossbows and the sling-ballistas that set an increasing number of siege engines afire with what was starting to be called the Tansu Cocktail.

The Gate Breaker, however, managed to breach the gate, and Daros led his men through the first wall. There, they ran headlong into a whole legion of enemy footmen. Much smaller than Daros' people, the Mills nonetheless were dangerous.

The entire Mill frontline propped up tower shields, hardly waist high to Daros, and from behind crossbowmen fired. Unlike the keep-mounted crossbows, these didn't fire in rapid succession, though they hardly needed to. More than half of Daros' men fell to the bolts, and Daros himself felt two metal-squealing thuds against him.

Despite that, Daros charged the shield wall. At first, he realized none of his men followed, but so furious was he that he didn't care. On reaching the row of shields, Daros gripped the middle of his sword blade with his left hand and bashed the pommel into the shield in front of him.

The Mill whose shield Daros struck staggered back, and that allowed Daros the breach he wanted. Stepping through, Daros swung the sword around in his half-handed grip and slashed the end of the blade across a lightly armored crossbowman's throat.

Mill footmen counterattacked, but with Daros' armor they did little amid the disarray. Meanwhile, Daros hacked, hammered, and stabbed his way through crossbowmen and footmen alike. While fighting, Daros heard a roar among his men, who shook off their battle stupor to rush to his aid. So inspired, Daros' men likewise felled smaller Mill soldiers, though their own numbers suffered along the way.

Daros saw the glint of shiny armor and knew that he'd spotted the Mill nobleman who commanded the gate legion. The commander raised his smaller sword in a desperate show of resistance, but Daros easily knocked the weapon aside and kicked the Mill commander in the chest.

As the Mill commander fell, Daros leapt onto him and discarded his own sword to grapple the Mill and pull out his dagger. Daros pinned one of the Mill's arms with his foot and twisted the other about the wrist painfully, before his worked his dagger between Mill armor plates.

A thrust under the chest plate, followed by a sharp pivot one way then another, and it was over. Daros stood and grabbed the quickly dying Mill nobleman by the back of his armor. He hoisted the enemy commander high enough for all the Mill legionnaires to see.

"Surrender now and I give my oath that you shall be spared," Daros roared, shaking the Mill nobleman in his grip.

As if by magic, the will to fight bled out of the Mill legion, despite the fact their fellows carried on the defense of the second wall of Tansu. One of his scant few surviving men cracked a Mill helmet hard with his axe handle, which reignited Daros' rage.

"No!" Daros tromped toward the man and stabbed a fighter at the Mill footman. "We do not needlessly abuse prisoners. They are Mills, and that means they do not fight without a fighting leader. You will respect that!" and then Daros turned to face the other men of his company. "Is every Reg man clear on that?"

Nodding their ascend, each man to the last presented contrition in their expressions. The offending man planted his axe handle to the ground and knelt to bow his head to the back of the axe blade. "I beg your forgiveness, Lord Daros."

Others of Daros' company seemed to be staring at the small rivulets of blood seeping from punctures in his armor or from between plates.

"Mr lord," one Reg man pointed, but left the rest unsaid.

"Gern," Daros addressed the man he'd scolded, "Your penance will be to lead the escort of prisoners, safely, to the rear lines. I will have myself attended by the surgeons."

Daros finally felt the severity of his wounds, but by the Grace of the Heavens, he was able to walk back through the gate and away from the outer wall without much stumbling.

During the gate fight, some siege engines reached the wall, which were now secure with Reg soldiers. Other companies had flooded through the gate to cleans the grounds of Mill resistance, and now they too were marching passive Mill prisoners out.

Coming to the tents of surgeons, Daros stepped under the nearest one that wasn't already swamped with injured men. He slumped down on a wooden chair. Without a word, healers raced to his aid, carefully removing his armor one piece at a time. Nursemaids were quick to cover injuries with bandages soaked in spirits.

The chest plate and left arm proved the worst. The royal surgeon had to clip off the fins of the bolt in Daros' arm and push it the rest of the way through. This, while Daros was given a short stretch of rope to bite onto.

It was the bolt in his chest that caused the surgeon to suck in his breath. "Me lord, it's pierced where your liver is. Scrolls and experience are clear, that if I remove it you'll die of blood loss."

"I need to be ready for the next breach," Daros said, looking distant. "No matter the cost." and then gave the surgeon a steady gaze. "Do it."

"As you wish," the surgeon replied, before he began.

Through it all, Daros kept his stare solidly on the pauldron of his armor where the nursemaids had laid it. "Do you wonder if they were real?"

The surgeon looked briefly where Daros' attention was, before refocusing on his work and replying, "The golden lion, you mean, sire? Yes, I believe in them. All the bardic tales of the ancient beasts and the wild places where they dwelt have some element of truth in them, I'm sure."

"How can we be sure of every detail when nay one person has laid eyes on such a creature?" Daros wondered, wincing at a brush up against the bold in his chest, and went on, "The tales also speak of men removing mountains and sailing the skies. Building spires to the heavens and sending their every thoughts through the ether to be received by all."

"It's fabled that Tansu is itself build where ancient men sheered off a mountain," the surgeon remarked, "I cannot fathom how such feats were achieved, but I do know there are many who stare in wonder at my craft."

Through more searing pain, Daros blacked out a couple times, and when awakening once more, saw the offending bolt in a wooden bowl on the table of instruments next to his chair.

The surgeon was washing his hands in a basin, before seeing that Daros was awake and addressed him, "I don't know how, my lord, but you will live. The bleeding wasn't as serious as I had anticipated. I will document this, that other surgeons may learn from it-- with your permission, of course."

"Granted," Daros said, feeling euphoria from the intoxicating effects of spirits permeating his many injuries. "And surgeon, you have my compliments for such fine work."

"Thank the stars," the surgeon demurred, "For I know of nothing else that could have kept you alive."

The surgeon departed the tent and closed the flap, a sign to others than his patient was in recovery and not to be disturbed.

Far above the city of Tansu and surrounding mountainous country, indeed above the clouds and the air itself, soared Daros' benefactor. A relic of ancient men whose kind no longer walked the Earth. Their last desperate act of creation to lord over whatever survived their age of mistakes.

More than just an orbiting cluster of observatory satellites, the collective consciousness known as Laser Integrated Operating Network could exert influence from space. Its purpose was, in ancient times, described as Intelligent Selective Evolution.

Often, it dispatched reentry capsules to deploy what surviving humans thought were spirits or fairies, but in fact where nanobot cellular machines printed up and assembled in orbit. Resources mostly came from the asteroid belt.

So supplied, L.I.O.N. sought to influence human civilization across the millennia. The Reg hominid specimen, Lord Daros needed to survive so that, like other individuals so "blessed" by L.I.O.N.'s nanotech, his compassion and humility would spread through the genepool. The end goal was to mold these many hominid taxa toward a more promising future. Indeed into something better than the Homo sapiens forebears whose tales the many modern hominid species marveled at in myth and song.

L.I.O.N. became the gods that humanity always wanted and never found.


End file.
